


Who Will I Be Without Her?

by littlecreature



Category: Heathers (1988)
Genre: F/F, ITS IMPLIED????, Lesbians, TW: Self Harm, technically underage stuff but idk, tw: disordered eating ment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 09:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11483094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlecreature/pseuds/littlecreature
Summary: HOW MANY FUNERALS CAN SOMEONE ATTEND BEFORE THEY TURN NINETEEN? - Amanda Lovelace





	Who Will I Be Without Her?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a friend because she told me to hit her with feels. I think I delivered. First time posting here.

You are five, and you are shy. Your mother wraps your hair in two yellow ribbons and gives you a gentle shove into the kindergarten classroom and you jump as the door shuts behind you. You are pushed into a seat between two loud boys who mess your painting and tug your ribbons out your hair. 

You don’t speak for two weeks. 

Third week in, you see a girl in green reading a big book, you ask to share, and she says yes. She smells of lavender and she lets you sit on the beanbag next to her. When you ask her name, it’s at lunch (because she doesn’t let you talk when she’s reading but that’s ok, because she points out the big words anyway). She tells you it’s Heather and you smile because that’s your name too, and maybe the two of you should sit together, because boys are gross and they pull your hair and call you names. 

You agree. 

Next day, you’re sitting in another girl’s seat and at first, she’s as red as her cardigan, but then she finds out your name’s and makes you move over so she’s in the middle and declares the three of you to be best friends from this day forward.  
And that’s how it is. 

Quickly, the three of you grow. You have sleepovers, you take dance class, you share secrets. You wear yellow, green and red and that’s how it is. The other children learn your name, sometimes you wonder if you are a singular entity, unbreakable. You wonder if people can tell you apart. The teachers don’t seem to bother by the time you reach junior year. You’ve stopped caring. You’re too old to care about your personal identity. 

Doesn’t matter that when your boyfriend moans your name, you don’t know if he’s referring to you or your best friend. 

But it matters when Heather comes to stay (the red one, never the green, she always says no now, especially if she needs to have dinner at yours and you wonder if it’s because you pointed out her t-shirt was a little bit too tight or because she couldn’t finish the race in gym class but that doesn’t matter no) and you’re sharing secrets again and because it’s 3 AM you wonder if you’ve heard correctly, and apparently you have because she kisses you, and it’s softer than the ones you’re pressured into at the frat parties you shouldn’t be at. It’s a little wet because neither of you know what you’re doing, you’ve never even looked at a girl in that way before. Heather changes that. 

You find time to lose yourself in the feel of her hands on your body, the way her lips feel pressed against your neck. Neither of you say I Love You but it’s there, you can feel it when your hearts beat together in the middle of the night, skin flushed scarlet, slick with sweat. You feel her eyes on you always, the smell of her perfume, and there is a permanent red haze on your vision, but never out of anger. 

She is there when your family begins to break, dutifully stealing pills and disposing of them, snapping razors in half when she finds them discharged from their original position. You notice, but say nothing, half hoping she won’t stop. 

Knowing that won’t stop you. 

Knowing you’d be the first to go. 

You find out when you’re sitting in home room, and it’s hard enough to keep the tears in. You don’t realise until the ink smudging on your notes for your test next period, and you wonder if you’ll be excused. Heather is quiet, playing with the pages of her book. But you know she’s relieved, and it only makes you cry harder. Veronica is stoic, almost unimpressed by the news that her best friend is dead. 

Suicide. 

When you go home, and your pillow becomes your best friend, you find it ironic that she went the way she was trying to pull you back from. You never noticed, not once. There were no signs, no hints of what was to come. Only a discarded copy of The Bell Jar that you stole from the bedroom once you were brave enough to enter it. You keep it in your bookcase, and you look to it for inspiration or comfort or something else. There are doodles over the margins, and words underlined and splashes of dried nail-varnish, the bottom corners clearly water damaged, but there it stays, even though your dad offers to buy you a new copy, a better one. 

You find nothing left for you, otherwise. Perhaps she didn’t think of you, perhaps the last year have all been an elaborate ruse, something for Heather to feel but easy enough to leave behind. 

You are seventeen, you don’t wear ribbons in your hair anymore, you don’t sit next to a girl in a red cardigan, but you do pass by her grave, a yellow carnation in hand. You leave one everyday on her birthday, you notice that nobody else bothers. And you know nobody will for you, either. 

It doesn’t get easier when it’s the boys (you didn’t know they were like you and maybe you could have helped), and JD blows himself up (you never wanted to help him), a fitting way to end the school year. It started with him, and it ended with him too.  
Nobody leaves a flower at his grave, not even Veronica. 

You find yourself stuck in your room, and you take the copy of The Bell Jar and let it fall in the trash. You can’t let her linger, not forever. You open your bedroom window to let the air in and let Heather Chandler out, and you feel senior year could be different. 

It won’t be, but you like to hope.


End file.
